Illustration: Liu Rui/GT

I recently had dinner with a 20-something Chinese student from Nanjing who just returned from a year teaching Chinese in Beirut. Like many in China, he's got his eye on a career in government, and he's hoping his excellent Arabic skills will give him a leg up. He's now working in Qatar for a few months to gain more experience abroad.

His story is hardly unusual.

My former roommate studied Italian in university, and was recruited by a top news media organization immediately after graduation simply for his language skills.

Another friend studied French in China and lived in Paris for a few years before he was picked up by a private equity firm in Beijing to seek opportunities in Europe.

Finally, a 21-year-old I met from Chongqing moved to Germany in September to pursue a master's degree in computer science with a course load largely in German.

Despite their different language pursuits, these four young men have one thing in common: They became fluent in English by the age of 21. By then, English had become a bore, and they were already well into picking up a second foreign language.

Here's something even better: None of them spent a single day studying in an English-speaking country. They acquired the language of Shakespeare right here in China.

But not how you think.

They studied in the classroom, sure, they had no choice, but they reached fluency elsewhere: the Internet.

There's nothing new about Chinese embracing popular American culture, but today's teachers are Lady Gaga and The Big Bang Theory, and they're doing a much better and faster job imparting English to young Chinese than anyone standing in front of a chalkboard ever could.

Many teenagers in China and elsewhere in Asia roll their eyes up during English class. It's too easy, they think, and they would rather be at home watching Modern Family instead. Today, there are plenty of young folks from Harbin to Chengdu who speak a colloquial, bold and sassy English. It isn't uncommon to meet young people who have never stepped foot outside China and yet speak an impeccable English, sometimes better than those who have spent five years in North America. They licked their chops largely in front of a computer screen.

Websites like tv.sohu and iqiyi have become the unintended sources of English acquisition. The Internet is in, textbooks are out.

In October, Beijing's education authorities announced a reduction in the weight of the English portion of the city's national college entrance examinations, or gaokao, beginning in 2016. Other jurisdictions are also mulling the idea. 

Good for them.

As proficiency is derived from sources outside the classroom, an exam with a hefty focus on English seems futile.

Of course, in a country where roughly half the population is currently without access to the Internet, classroom English will remain the only viable source of exposure for many. But with the central government's ambitious plans to expand broadband Internet to even the far flung crevices of the country by 2020, that could soon change.

The ineffectiveness of classroom English reminds me of the reality of learning French in my home country of Canada.

There, Canadians outside Quebec, where the majority of people are Francophone, are quick to include French under the languages header of their résumés. After all, they have been studying it in school a few hours a week for years, even a decade. Don't they deserve to be called bilingual?

The truth is their French is lousy, and they get overwhelmed just ordering a beer in Montreal.

In the future, young Chinese will learn English faster than ever before, and not by sitting at their desks perusing grammar rules. The consequences are marvelous. Like the four cases above, it could mean turning to a second foreign language. And in today's globalized world with China at its core, that could only be a good thing.

The author is a Canadian writer based in Beijing. opinion@globaltimes.com.cn